The most powerful AMD processor to date, the Epyc 9965, is offered on Ebay and other online retailers, when writing the editorial’s time, with discounts up to 47%.
Compared to other similar cases that I previously followed, the big difference is that there are many more Epyc 9965 on sale in the United States than before and that all CPUs are new.
Launched in October 2024, the EPYC 9965 is the most expensive AMD processor with a suggested retail price of $ 14,813 and its most powerful with 192 Zen 5C and 384 threads. Research on eBay for the 100-00000000976, the OEM SKU code (Stock Keeping Unit) for the 9965, displays 10 results, all based in the United States and new.
This is the first of several articles based on data that I have compiled on 41 CPU Zen 4 and Zen 5 (Sockée, OEM). In the rest of the series, I will examine the cost per nucleus, the performance by nucleus, the AMD processors which become more expensive, all with the new Ryzen 9900/9950 x3D processors in the backdrop.
Some sellers offered 9965 for as little as $ 8,250 when buying a pair; The individual price has gone from $ 8,369. Curiously, the search for Epyc 9965 presented several entries from continental China. I estimate at 100 the total number of Epyc 9965 currently on sale on Ebay.
On the Open Web, Wiredzone, an American online retailer, stores the Epyc 9965 for just over $ 10,000, a little more expensive than Ebay, but it is a recognized company. It has been at this price for more than three months now. A dozen other retailers from around the world sell the AMD flagship server processor for less than $ 11,000, a clear sign that the offer is relatively abundant.
The Epyc 9965 requires a special motherboard if you plan to perform a pair (because why not). Makeing sons of 768 threads on a motherboard such as the Gigabyte MZ73-LM2 with up to 24 DIMM locations is something that few of us need, especially when a two-seater motherboard sells around $ 2500 and requires a special case. But if you want the best workstation, it’s a very good starting point.
So why such a drop?
The demand for this particular type of processor, which focuses on hyperscalers such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, was one of the engines of AMD’s success on the servers. AMD’s market share went from nearly zero to around a decade to around 25% in 2024.
So what to do with the myriad of suppliers who sell this advanced server processor for thousands of dollars less than the price of the sticker? Could the excess inventory be a reason to know why have prices decrease so quickly on such a recent processor?
But here is the thing, during my research, I was shocked to see that the 9965 was not the only one to have such a discount: the 9655 (up to 47%), the Epyc 9655 (up to 57%) and so on, and so on all the large experienced price reductions.
Indeed, my instantaneous survey on the 5th generation Bordeaux processors of AMD (with a pinch of Threadripper), 41 processors in all, reveals that the majority of models have a 20% or more discount once they have hit the retail.
The story repeating
I started to find this odd scenario two years ago when I noticed that the American retailers sold the three -month Epyc 9954 processor with a massive reduction of 30%. A month later, in March 2023, I noticed that hundreds of Epyc processors of 34 cores of 34 cores were while Chinese hyperscalers rushed to improve their servers.
It seemed that someone in the supply chain tried to make a small money on “obsolete” equipment with prices falling to just over $ 1000 in June 2023. The same goes with the Epyc 9754 server processor to 128 cores which has experienced significant discounts but nothing on the scale that I see today.
